Research. Knowledge of key facts make you seem smart, even if you really aren’t an expert. As long as everything presented is consistent, the reader is free to fill in the rest of the details at as high a level as appropriate. Sort of an illusion of intelligence – if he knows that, surely he knows X, Y, and Z.

Not getting too bogged down in details, yet still doing something clever. I think OSC’s Xenocide can be used to illustrate this. I doubt OSC is an expert in the molecular biology of alien species, but his characters are. So he has them work towards goals requiring intelligence, but we don’t see each step in detail, just the end result, which could only be achieved if they are intelligent.

Having characters do the things that you as a writer think intelligent people will do. And that sort of boils down to world observations, personal opinion, and more than a small touch of creativity (A sort of intelligence all of it’s own). I think one of OSC’s writing books talks about this, how you will write about a clever character will reflect what you think is clever.

You don't actually need to make a character intelligent. What you really have to do is figure out what behavior your reader will percieve as inteligent and build it into your character.

Depict him/her beating a computer at chess. Show that he/she is well versed in arcane knowledge like relativity or genetics.

So, if a character knows 2 of the 6 secrets you can say he is well learned. If the character figures out one of those thing by himself, then he is intelligent. If he can't, he is less intelligent. If he doesn't understand basic things about the world he lives on, he is stupid. The way the reader will percieve the character would be by what he can figure out about the story or the world.

The key is that you know everything; your characters know/can figure out things according to their intelligence. It's actually an "illusion" of intelligence as GZ said, but that's the way it works.

1--time--you have time as the writer to come up with all the great comebacks that you as a person never manage to think about until it's way too late. Your character will look much smarter than you because your character will come up with them right when they are needed.

2--time, again--OSC has said over and over again not to use the first idea that comes to you (or the second) because they are almost always cliches (and if not, they are the most likely ideas and other people will have thought of them first, too). Keep thinking and come up with the third or fourth or fifth idea and let your characters think of them first (as OSC does with Bean).

The more thought you give to the things your characters do and why they do them, the smarter you will be able to make them look because they won't need to give as much thought to those things--they'll look smart because they'll think of them very quickly.

Time is truly the author's friend in this.

You (as a member of this forum, among otherthing) have access to a lot of people with different kinds of experience, knowledge, and even intellegence. And you have the ability to put your character on hold when a particularly knotty situation comes up in your story and ask a number of people how to solve this problem. I can guarantee that for any problem you submit to this forum, someone here will come up with a solution that will be better than what the average reader might have thought up as a possible solution.

In the end, it becomes your task as a writer to judge which solution best meets the needs of the character, and convince the reader that the character is actually thinking it up. It is frequently this last requirement that is the most difficult when dealing with a character more intellegent than you are. For instance, if I have a character employ a brilliant endgame in a game of chess, I have to at least touch on the thought process that allows the character to think it up, which means that I have to display a grasp of chess strategy at least as good as that of my intended audience.

I actually don't know for sure how OSC came up with the strategies employed in Ender's Game, but the fact is that the overall command philosophy Ender employs seems highly suggestive of the qualities of a special operations unit, emphasizing tactical flexability, use of assymetric forces, concentrated indirection, discretionary orders and active encouragement of independence in subordinates. I think that maybe OSC just got lucky though a general dislike of the spit and polish, SNAFU, hurry up and wait mentality that generally characterizes traditional European military organizations. But he could have arrived at a similar result by taking expert advice, then reverse engineering the underlying mental abstractions and putting them into Ender's head.

Other times characters may be able to come out with a sentence here or there, and you've no idea where those words came from.

Something I will *always* recommend any creative person to do is to value errors - and I don't mean simply for the obvious learning experience. I mean because sometimes an apparently wrong sentence, a wrong note, a wrong shade of colour, can actually have real significance. It's about realising that sometimes, just sometimes, your subconscious is momentarily able to drag up something from that huge resource of memory that your conscious mind reagrds as superfluous or innaccessible.

If ever you "appear" to make a mistake when writing, step back a moment and look at it closely. Was it really a mistake? Or was your subconscious trying to tell you something?

I once read Frederick Forsyth quoted as saying that a writer should feel more like a secretary. When you've begun to note where your subconscious is kicking in, you'll know exactly what I mean.

In my current work, I have a futuristic order of simple robed "knights" who use a "lightstave". I wanted them to have acrobatic abilities, so I figured it would require an eastern-style meditative state, as like martial arts require. Without thinking, I coined this as "Kalaki". Wasn't sure if it sounded eastern enough, so considered changing the name to "Kalachi", as "chi" is obviously an oriental concept - but wasn't sure if that looked right.

That's an example of the subconscious [or whatever it is] versus the conscious.

I looked up "Kalaki" on Google just now, to check for hidden meanings. Here's a direct link that completely gobsmacked me:

http://www.dan.swidnik.com.pl/ang/akalaki.htm

How the living **** did my subconscious do that?! I have never even heard of Kalaki!!!

Tomorrow this will seem normal. God, I love this job.

BTW, do you happen to be a President, a Commander, or a Dictator?

Perhaps a Lark, Golden Hawk, or Avanti?

A more practical way, perhaps, to get that realistic character depth, would be to try to read work by someone in that profession.

For example, if looking to create a bounty hunter character, then why not read something - possibly an autobio or two, or at the very least a few articles - from one or two real-life bounty hunters. Also consider mercenaries as an additional point for research [depending upon the world and function of your bounty hunter]. Everyone has their idiosyncrasies - real world research could add that extra depth and realism to such targeted characters, especially in dialogue. It would also give you a better idea of how a skilled professional in that field works.

What do you mean by that statement?

He's a customizer. I guess that's cool, but I think Dictator is cooler.

I am utterly amazed that you came up with your name knowing nothing about America's longest-lasting producer of automobiles, Studebaker.